Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

8gb limit in NT

0 helpful
8 replies

by harleyman85

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I have an NT server running Exchange 5.5 sp3. I cloned the original 8gb disk to a 20 g drive, and installed a second 20g drive to be used as a mirror set. Both harddrives only being seen as 8gb, even with service pack 6A installed. The computer is a Dell xps 350 pentium II. The first drive shows the full size of both partitions, but is only reported as 8gb total capacity.

8 replies

by rapidad

when you loaded the original NT you set up whats called a hardware abstraction layer, the newer versions of which can see and handle (as long as the bios complies [see mrbios.com for this]) the larger drives. It may be that NT resources could help here, will have to look it up. any chance of reloading the os? probably to much work, I can agree with that. wait for some other answers and maybe someone wiil have a better solution, while i go research resources.

by timwalsh

Does BIOS recognize the correct drive size during boot-up? You may need to update the BIOS on your computer. As an alternative, you can load the drive translation software that probably came with your new drives.

by harleyman85

As far as i can tell, on bootup,the bios recognizes the drive correctly, although I didn't actually go into the bios, and verify capacity. With my experience in NT, I've found that that NT doesn't care about bios limitations, as ong as SP4 or better is installed.

by dirk.michielsen

Maybe the cause is the bios of the pc, you can look for an update of the bios firmware at Dell ?
Maybe, when you use imaging software, not the whole 20gb disk is used, but then you can see it in the disk administrator of NT.

by parbo

I think you're problem lies in the cloning of the drive. I remember from my days working with/supporting NT that you only had to specify the 8GB partition during install. Whenever you specified anything larger than 8gb or more partitions NT wouldnt allow you to install it. Once NT was loaded you would load a driver under SCSI DEVICES, in the Control Panel and that would allow you to make use of the total hdd. You might want to check out this old KB article Q197667. I know you have applied SP6Abut double check to make sure the right atapi.sys file is being used.

This discussion is closed to new replies.